WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th October, 2018) Former FBI agent Terry Albury has been sentenced to four years in prison for leaking confidential information to a media publication, the Department of Justice said in a press release on Thursday.
"Terry J. Albury, 39, a former Special Agent of the FBI, was sentenced today to 48 months in the District of Minnesota in connection with his unauthorized disclosure and retention of classified national defense information," the release said.
Albury, who pleaded guilty in April to charges under the Espionage Act, knowingly released national security data to which he had access as an agent of the Minneapolis field office. The Department of Justice said the defendant employed various tactics to leak the information to a reporter from the publication The Intercept to avoid being detected.
The former FBI-employee told the court he had no intention to harm anybody within the agency, according to the US media. The defendant's attorney explained his client's actions were provoked by racist sentiments in the Minneapolis office, where Albury was the only African-American agent who worked for a counterterrorism department.
The Justice Department stressed in the release that the agent violated the trust of the FBI and put the US national security at risk.
The sentencing of Albury comes just one day after a senior Treasury Department official was charged with leaking suspicious activity reports to media organizations. Both actions by the US Department of Justice come on the heels of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' pledge to crack down on government leakers at the request of President Donald Trump.
